Little Chocobo Hints at Direct Sequel to Final Fantasy XIII

[Adzma]

X-2 was quite a step down in quality to the point of degrading into the worst exesses of fan-service at some points

But that moment when they're all bathing in the hot spring together...........

What were we talking about? Ahem, I think XIII cops more flack than it deserves. Yes it had many things wrong with it, but it did have good elements sprinkled in there. You never know, SQUENIX might finally learn their lesson and listen to fan complaints.

 

[McNinja]

But with the step down in quality from X to X-2 applied to XIII... Is it possible to make a game so poor...?

Yes. It will be a 60 hour movie. Basically, you'll set up a combat system at the very start, then the game will take over. The game will auto-run everywhere, and the fights will be in cutscenes. The only time you can do anything is pause it so you don't miss any of the glorious pretentiousness or fan-service. The game will also auto-level that characters for you, but it will do it instantly, so you don't miss any of the magnificent bastardization of a once-decent franchise.

The characters will all have Vanille's voice, and only one of them will be a decent person (the others will be either terrible people or annoying douchebags). They will throw more names at you, and exposition about events that either happened in the last game or happened off-screen will be 80% of all dialogue spoken by anything in the game. Another 10% will be grunts, snorts, oohs, aahs, and giggling, while the final 10% will be asinine and insipid whining. There will be no character development, because the environments and shiny lights will take up 87% of the screen.

And the fanboys will eat it up like pie.

 

[gregitaly]

I'm going to call it now... it's a cart racer.

 

[Dimbo_Sama]

*Jumps out the window*

 

[skibadaa]

I already beat FFXIII and to be honest...who was the bad guy? I mean I play a lot of RPGS and I follow the story well but wow >_> just WOW was that a bad story.

That's just it; there doesn't have to be a bad guy. You have the protagonists, i.e. the characters you played with, and the antagonists, whom I won't mention due to spoilers. Things aren't always so easily defined as black and white, which is true even for make-believe stories. But if you need to make the definition that badly, just go ahead and say the antagonists were the bad guys there. They are the closest at fitting the bill.

That said, I think the ending for XIII wasn't pulled off all that well. They certainly could have done better.

Well the story didn't help with the fact that I didn't know who to root for, should I cheer for the head of cocoon or the rag tag group. Because to be honest a story can have it to were both sides are not "evil" or "good" but you know the protagonists is from motivation against the antagonist. It doesn't have to be black and white but it be easy if the story was better told. Because having the data log help tell the story does not help a story driven game out when it is cut scene heavy.

Cutscene heavy is an understatement and a half. Im sorry but any game that has mid cutscene savepoints has TO MANY CUTSCENES. It wasnt ok when Hideo Kojima turned MGS4 into a 45 hour interactive movie and its not ok here.
To be honest, i didnt find that i didnt know who to root for, i knew from pretty early on that all the characters here "villain" or "hero" were as vacuous and 1 dimentional as eachother. The only one that acted remotely like an actual human being was Sazh, at a push, and even then he was still rendered a moron because he had a chocobo living in his fro.. I MEAN SERIOUSLY!! COMEON!!! A BIRD IN HIS F****NG HAIR!! How can you take anything he says or does seriously when there is what may as well be a F****NG pokemon living in this guys hair. I mean its pretty obvious that the writer thought he was being really f****ng clever by making a statement about the current world parranoia about terrorism (for l'cie read "terrorist/illegal immigrant" and for pulse read "the middle east" and for purge read "deportation" etc...) and how governments can whip up panic and animosity to help legitimize the destruction of civil liberty and freedom, while also taking our minds off of how the ruling class is bending us over and taking as much as they like without the common courtesy of a reacharound (ie: the sanctum, and for sanctum read "Corporate America"), oh well done mate its not like everyone and his f****ng dog hasnt been making the same commentary through the medium of fiction since... oh i dunno, the TURN OF THE F****NG MILLENNIUM!! And doing it with better script and characters no less. The whole thing is trying sooo hard to be morally grey that it ends up being devoid of real moral definitions.

And is it just me or should Snow be put on the sex offenders register for grooming underage girls (amongst all his other crimes against humanity which are too numerous to list here)? because Lightning's little sister cant be more than 13 by the look of her, and maybe in the datalog it states that shes actually 18 or something and that Snow is actually a really hench 17 year old (i dunno i havent read all the reams of useless info there) but to that i say BULLSHIT, she payed a back-alley counterfiter to make her a fake id because that girl is barely into the first years of puberty and Snow was blatantly leaving school with a dissapointing set of GCSE's a few years before she was even F****NG BORN!! ugh... i could go on.... but i really dont have the energy.

 

[Jamie Doerschuck]

Ugh..... I hadn't tried Final Fantasy until I tried XIII. Obviously that was a HORRIBLE way for me to be introduced to the series. I figured that because it got such high reviews from the magazines that it'd be good, but I guess not. Just so you know: "It gets better after the first 20 hours" isn't a good, convincing argument. That just means you're a whore to the series.

I hope Square's next "game" isn't another multi-thousand dollar movie.

 

[skibadaa]

Ugh..... I hadn't tried Final Fantasy until I tried XIII. Obviously that was a HORRIBLE way for me to be introduced to the series. I figured that because it got such high reviews from the magazines that it'd be good, but I guess not. Just so you know: "It gets better after the first 20 hours" isn't a good, convincing argument. That just means you're a whore to the series.

I hope Square's next "game" isn't another multi-thousand dollar movie.

Dude seriously, try ANY of the other FF games (exept the MMORPG, thats rubbish too) they are all masterpieces compared to this tripe, and i am a whore to the series and i can state for the record it doesnt get any better after 20 hours :/

 

[twaddle]

I guess this means I actually have to buckle down and finish XIII.
(Stupid save file and it's stupid dying... I was almost finished then, bang!, gone)

Oh, I should probably add that I was one of the 5 people on this planet who enjoyed X-2

Make that Six

Make that seven X-2 was awesome. Freeform mission based story progression, with an upgradeable classwapping combat/experience system? Now thats what i call a quality RPG! Yes the story had some weak points where they layered on the cheese so much it was painfull (yunas concert in the thunder plains, yuk!) but that was happily made up for by a strong gamplay experience that had discernable
consiquences to player actions that affected overall plot development and thus providing tangeble depth to the story.

And yeah, dont bother finishing XIII, youd be spending your time better watching paint dry, at least paint is less annoying. I stopped playing after about 25 hours because i just wanted all of the characters to die, painfully. I turned it off and started playing Chrono Trigger on my snes emulator to remind myself what a good game is like and to get all nostalgic about when the squaresoft brand was a mark of quality, now theyve gone all Lucasarts.... *chunders*

I think this is kind of a rip. Square Enix refuses to make DLC. They have admitted that they had to cut back so much from 13 that with the all the extra content they cut they could make a whole other game. I guess they actually decided to go with that. I used to love square enix but now...i just dont know anymore

 

[katsumoto03]

Oh, for fuck's sake...

Oh, for fuck's sake indeed.

 

[Jamie Doerschuck]

Ugh..... I hadn't tried Final Fantasy until I tried XIII. Obviously that was a HORRIBLE way for me to be introduced to the series. I figured that because it got such high reviews from the magazines that it'd be good, but I guess not. Just so you know: "It gets better after the first 20 hours" isn't a good, convincing argument. That just means you're a whore to the series.

I hope Square's next "game" isn't another multi-thousand dollar movie.

Dude seriously, try ANY of the other FF games (exept the MMORPG, thats rubbish too) they are all masterpieces compared to this tripe, and i am a whore to the series and i can state for the record it doesnt get any better after 20 hours :/

Well that's what people (tried to) convince me of... I bought it while it was on sale at Amazon, figuring I'd give it the good old fashioned college try on the cheap. Not the WORST 40 dollars I've ever spent, but it definitely could have went towards something better. The story, despite what some people on here are trying to claim, is really dumb. The voice acting is pretty unbelievable (considering the entire game sounds like the people puffed up their chests and threw their shoulders back "with pride" before saying their lines), and the combat. Sucks. It's not even combat. It's "press X every 15 or 20 seconds to attack".

Also, you know what's annoying? How they don't tell you anyone's names for a really long time. I grabbed a little booklet thingy from Gamestop before XIII was released and that's the ONLY reason I knew who "Lightning" was. I played for about two hours and I don't even know who that black guy is, and I hardly know who "Snow" is. I know for sure they didn't say these people's names considering whenever I went to a battle scene I would look in the little bar with everyone's hit-points and get really confused as to who the other people were. And I don't understand the significance of that... Little girl. The other main girl who isn't Lightning.. Any cut-scene with her in it just seemed unnecessary and annoying.

P.S. My CAPTCHA to post on this thread is "provided by Dish Network".. I feel like the Escapist is starting to sell out a bit...

 

[kingmob]

So why all the hate for FF13? It's just pointless and confusing...

It's really not that difficult to understand why there's so much hate for such a game many dislike. The reasoning behind this "hate" has been explained many times, and it's not even the linearity that's the core issue, though that's certainly a problem. The product is a disgrace to game design. Furthermore, your claim that you should immediately trust reviews [those same reviews giving this horrible game ridiculously high scores] because they say the game is linear is a poor point to make, especially considering those same reviews failed to mention what a horrendously broken storyline the game has...

There seem to be a few misunderstandings. Linearity in itself is not neccesarily a bad thing. You also confuse your opinion for fact. That you hate linearity, doesn't make linear design into a "disgrace".

From what I can see there's been a disjoint in the FF series for a while, where they have taken a different angle and fans of the old games don't like it. I can understand that, it is annoying to see your favourite game changed, but that does not make it bad, just different. I have played both and happen to like the new games better, now that must surely make me an ignorant fool...

And to be honest, most people hated XII because it was too open ended, just goes to show.

For me, the only two big gripes I have is the horrendous over-acting (it gets better) and the ridiculous long tutorial. But the game matures very well up to the point where it becomes challenging and a lot of fun. It is just a shame it takes a long time, at which point many gamers have already given up (based on comments about the simple, sit back let the AI do it, combat. This can only be said if you haven't played very far tbh).

 

[D_987]

There seem to be a few misunderstandings. Linearity in itself is not neccesarily a bad thing. You also confuse your opinion for fact. That you hate linearity, doesn't make linear design into a "disgrace".

I think the only misunderstanding here is between what you think I'm saying, and what I'm actually saying. I'm not claiming the design is a disgrace because the game is linear. The design is a disgrace because the game itself is an example of appalling game design:

- Massive difficulty spikes.
- 30 hour tutorial.
- Linear corridors filled with enemies that barely reward you for fighting them - waste of time.
- Slow, tedious battle system that forces you to fight the same way 90% of the time.
- Horrible dialogue.
- Convoluted plot with several jarring plot holes and a horrible ending.

From what I can see there's been a disjoint in the FF series for a while, where they have taken a different angle and fans of the old games don't like it. I can understand that, it is annoying to see your favourite game changed, but that does not make it bad, just different. I have played both and happen to like the new games better, now that must surely make me an ignorant fool...

The old games had issues too, but the issues raised above are near universally agreed upon issues the game has. You can still enjoy a game whilst admitting it has issues - the issue with your post is that you immediately, and without any basis in reality, assume I'm mocking anyone that enjoys playing the game.

And to be honest, most people hated XII because it was too open ended, just goes to show.

That's not really true, most people hated XII because it had a plot that didn't go anywhere. In fact I've seen a number of people claim they now appreciate the overall quality of XII due to how poorly designed XIII actually was.

For me, the only two big gripes I have is the horrendous over-acting (it gets better) and the ridiculous long tutorial. But the game matures very well up to the point where it becomes challenging and a lot of fun. It is just a shame it takes a long time, at which point many gamers have already given up (based on comments about the simple, sit back let the AI do it, combat. This can only be said if you haven't played very far tbh).

No it can't. I beat the game, 5 starred every side mission, collected almost every item in the game, and I still beleive you have very, very little control over your party. All you're ultimately doing is telling them whether to attack, defend, use magic etc. Unless you're a total masochist, that loves using badly designed interfaces in a real-time situation and therefore enters specific commands. There's no real depth to fighting enemies, and the combat system makes it look like you have far more control than you actually do.

 

[Darkwhite]

So FFXIII Was awful (roughly on par with X-2) and i'm guessing the sequels are going to be worse, I think SquareEnix need to get back to basics, its what made them great.

 

[Darkwhite]

No. Bad. We've already seen that direct sequels don't work for Final Fantasy games. Spinoffs rarely work, either.

Final Fanatsy Spinoff's rarely work? Clearly you haven't played Dissidia, Dirge of Cereberus, or even Crisis Core cause all 3 of those games were awesome and fun.

Dirge was just a whole world of awful, a poorly made (and very easy) 3rd person shooter just to cash in on 7, Crisis core was another horrible 7 Cash in and as for Dissidia, i will admit it was fun, not a great game but a good laugh for a few hours.

 

[Altherix]

Hope it turns out to be true, would like a continuation of XIII. I had fun playing XIII, think it gets way too much flack from people who didn't like it.

 

[Amnestic]

To throw my opinion into the proverbial ring: FFX-2's combat system was great.

And that was it. Everything else about it was terrible. The story was so bad and such a betrayal of some of the key themes and elements of FFX it was offensive. I've said this before, but it represents nothing less than the systematic destruction of Yuna's character. What could've been a chance to show her continue on her maturation and independence as a strong female lead that she showed both during and at the end of FFX was instead relegated to "GIRL POWER!" and chasing after her dead boyfriend like a delusional girl who can't let go of the past.

And yet, one of the primary motivations of her character in FFX was trying to move on from the past and create a better future. Then you've got the moé-isation of Rikku (who went from fanservice with a modicum of caring intelligence to batshit loopie Selphie) and Payne Lulu-Lite...my list of complaint could go on, but I have an essay to write; one, sadly, not on the many, many problems that are rife throughout FFX-2.

 

[AetherWolf]

No. Bad. We've already seen that direct sequels don't work for Final Fantasy games. Spinoffs rarely work, either.

Final Fanatsy Spinoff's rarely work? Clearly you haven't played Dissidia, Dirge of Cereberus, or even Crisis Core cause all 3 of those games were awesome and fun.

Dissidia? Good for some fanservice, but gets boring after a few plays.
DoC? LOLNO.
Crisis Core? Meh.

 

[OiXerxes]

I don't think this shameless plug has been used yet so...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s

Square, you don't make a sequel to a game that broke innumerable amounts of PS3's, including mine.